


The New Black

by lucymonster



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Future Fic, Gen, Imprisonment, MayThe4th Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-16 00:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18680092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: Leia gazes through the safety screen at the boy she used to nurse at her breast, and she’s never in her life felt less like she knows him – this tall, dark-eyed man who left home Ben Solo and came back Kylo Ren and now wears a name badge that reads Inmate 26629-101.There’s so much she’s never going to know about his life.





	The New Black

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kereia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kereia/gifts).



The door to the visitors’ cubicle is agonisingly slow to open. There’s the buzz of electro-powered locks disengaging, the shuffling of feet and the clanking of binders, and then all at once he’s right in front of her, closer than they’ve been in what feels like several lifetimes. Leia hides her hands beneath the table and lets her nails cut deep half-moons into her palms as she waits for the guards to finish cuffing him to his chair on the other side of the reinforced duraplast screen.

He looks tired, she thinks. Tired and pale and sick, though that could come down to the yellow jumpsuit that’s replaced his usual clothing since being taken into custody. She remembers seeing him in it at his sentencing, remembers how alone he looked, shackled under floodlights in a room full of black-clad lawyers and armed security. They say prison uniforms are a safety measure, meant to separate inmates from staff and public in case of an incident. Leia strongly suspects there’s a punitive element mixed in as well – no one would choose that shade of yellow.

But he’s clean-shaven, at least, and his hair is trimmed neatly to just above his jawline, which is the shortest anyone’s persuaded him to wear it since he was fifteen years old. They haven't clipped him bald the way they sometimes do in holo-movies. He must be getting fed reasonably well, because he doesn’t look to have lost any weight. He’s also smiling, and his obvious pleasure at seeing her seems to lift the bags beneath his eyes and brighten him till the sickly colour of his prison uniform almost suits him.

The guards slam the steel door shut behind them, and there’s another loud buzz as the locks re-engage.

‘Hi, mom,’ says Ben.

The words of greeting that Leia planned out on her long wait now feel stuck inside her throat. ‘Hi, Ben,’ she manages to get out. ‘It’s good to see you.’

‘You too.’ He’s chewing his tongue, a nervous tic she recognises at once, though he’s otherwise completely composed. ‘I didn’t expect to see you today. Or, uh … ever.’

‘They didn’t tell you I was coming?’ It’s a surprising oversight on facility administration’s part, considering the sheer amount of effort it took to organise the trip. She had to wait weeks for her visitor’s pass to clear, and then weeks again for her scheduled transport from the nearest security checkpoint. Lightspeed-capable engines aren’t allowed anywhere near the prison station. An inmate who managed to steal a sublight shuttle would starve to death in the vacuum of space before they ever reached a civilian planet.

Maybe it’s just another layer of security: the less Ben knows about his upcoming schedule, the less he can plan for escape or rebellion. Leia’s quite sure he’s planning neither, but she can’t fault the facility for a bit of extra caution.

Ben just shakes his head and keeps on chewing his tongue. When it becomes clear he’s not going to say anything more – has, quite possibly, nothing more he _can_ say – Leia clears her throat and says, ‘I brought you a present. Nothing big, just a few things from home, some food and magazines and winter socks. They took it off me for scanning, but I checked the list of contraband and I’m sure there’s nothing in there you’re not allowed to have.’

‘Thank you,’ says Ben, strained and a little quavery on the final note. Leia gazes through the safety screen at the boy she used to nurse at her breast, and she’s never in her life felt less like she knows him – this tall, dark-eyed man who left home Ben Solo and came back Kylo Ren and now wears a name badge that reads Inmate 26629-101. The clear duraplast distorts his face just slightly. Somewhere embedded beneath his skin, a custom-made suppressive nanochip cuts him off from the Force so that Leia feels nothing when she reaches out.

There’s so much she’s never going to know about his life. So much she’ll never be able to ask him and so much he’ll never be able to tell her. Perhaps that silence is for the best. Leia hasn’t yet asked herself if she’s really ready to hear what he likely has to say.

But she’s here now. She’s here, and even through the safety screen and his grinding nerves she can see how glad he is she came to visit.

She clears her throat to dislodge the lump that’s forming again. ‘Well, then,’ she says. ‘How are you keeping? Are they treating you well?’

Ben shrugs, as if the question is a frivolous one. ‘I can’t really complain.’

 _That must be a first_ , Leia almost says. Even before he fell to darkness, Ben wasn’t exactly famous for his sunny disposition. But even her most stalwart inner optimist doesn’t think their relationship is ready for that kind of casual teasing. So aloud, she asks: ‘You’re finding ways to pass the time?’

‘There’s a lot more to do here than you’d expect,’ says Ben. ‘It’s no funhouse or anything, but there’s work. Everyone’s allowed a job, provided they’re on good behaviour. I’ve been cleaning and cataloguing old Hosnian records – data packages, you know, anything that survived.’ The phrase _data packages_ doesn’t fill Leia with promise, but he looks quite earnest in his enthusiasm. ‘It’s actually not that different for the work I used to do extracting intel from the Empire’s archives. The other day, I dug out a bunch of old transit files that the head archivist thought were too scrambled to salvage. Once they’re decrypted, they should have names and registration numbers for everyone who came through the Cartoda long-haul port, who might have been docked there when…’ He trails off. When the army he voluntarily served in blew up the whole system and killed everyone in it, he means.

‘It sounds like you’re good at what you do,’ Leia says, suppressing that thought by sheer force of will.

‘I don't like being idle.’ Still in that earnest voice. ‘At least if I’m working, I’m giving something back. Even if only in the smallest way.’

‘Giving back … that’s something you care about?’ An honest question, though the moment it leaves her lips, Leia knows what it must sound like to his ears. And maybe there’s a part of her that means it skeptically, too. Ben has never expressed any remorse for the things he did as part of the First Order. He never struck a deal when they took him into custody, never handed over a word of usable intel or a single clue that would help the Resistance clean up his mess a little bit faster.

‘There’s no reason not to do it,’ says Ben. ‘Since I’m going to be spending the rest of my life in here, I might as well find something worthwhile to spend it on.’

He’s probably right in that calculation. Leia knows it, and the knowledge sits uncomfortably inside her, righteous justice mixed with a mother's unquenchable grief. The New Republic has always believed in rehabilitative justice, but there’s not much on Ben’s rap sheet to recommend him for early parole. She wonders if he’s taken his reasoning any further, and tried to weigh up how much archival work it will take to change the colour of his ledger. How many recovered files make up for one stolen sentient life? How many for one hundred?

She hates her politician’s tongue for deserting her in this hour of need. There are so many things that Leia could say, but they’re all caught up in the wave of conflicted emotion inside her. Anger and despair and love all intertwined, and she’s deeply glad that Ben’s Force suppressor prevents him from seeing it.

‘I also put a few credits into your commissary account,’ she says, for want of anything better to say. ‘You’ll be able to buy yourself something nice.’

Ben’s smile slips. He’s back to chewing his tongue. ‘I can’t tell,’ he says at last, ‘if you’re here to try and make peace with the past or pay off your own misplaced sense of guilt.’

‘Neither can I,’ Leia admits. She’s being foolish – Ben doesn’t need the Force to read her. For all that’s happened, for all the baggage that lies between them, he’s still her son.

‘You don’t have to do either. I did what I did, and if I could go back in time, I’d make some choices differently and some the same. I’m not going to apologise to you or anyone for doing what I thought was right.’ The words sound harsh, but there’s a gentleness in his voice that does absolutely nothing to ease Leia’s inner conflict. ‘Those people who died on a shitty freight port on Cartoda, their deaths would have meant something if they’d helped the First Order achieve its goals. But it didn’t go that way, and so they at least deserve to have their names written down. It’s all I can really do for them.’ He shrugs. Swallows. ‘And you don’t have to visit me if you don’t want to. But I’m really glad you did.’

‘Ben,’ says Leia. She doesn’t know what else to say. She wanted so badly for something to have changed. Now it has and it also hasn't, and like every moment of her life since the day she became a parent, she's left stranded in grey uncertainty when all she wants is black or white.

Or garish, sickly prison yellow.

The door on Ben’s side of the cubicle gives another loud buzz, and one of the guards comes back in carrying a small translucent plastic box. Inside it, Leia can make out the unwrapped shapes of most of what she put in his care package. They've apparently confiscated the magazines – too much of a secret message-passing risk, perhaps.

The thought almost makes her laugh. If only she and her son were communicating well enough to have messages worth passing in secret.

But as she watches Ben rummage through the box – his cuffs have just enough length on their chain to let him get one hand in at a time – the place inside her mother’s heart that no time or trauma can kill grows warm. Prison life has changed him a lot, if he’s this delighted with a few candy bars and a pair of woollen socks. Much like his archival efforts, these small tokens are all she has left to offer.

She decides now, on stubborn and heart-aching impulse, she’s glad she came to offer them.


End file.
